They can't even muster the decency to admit they're targeting Muslim face coverings. We're supposed to believe it's also about balaclavas, dark sunglasses and scarves

Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard: “You talk to me, I talk to you; I see your face, you see mine. ... It’s a question, in my opinion, that’s not simply religious but human.”THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot/File

It’s mostly about the Quiet Revolution. That’s what we’ve been assured by wise owl pundits about all this intolerant-looking rigmarole in Quebec. When polls show far more Quebecers than other Canadians hesitant to vote for a turban-wearing Sikh like NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, the owls exhort us to contextualize: Quebecers’ rejection of the Catholic Church’s outsized role in their society left them suspicious of all public displays of religiosity (except Catholic ones, weirdly). This explains higher levels of antipathy toward other religious symbols as well, we are told: kippas, kirpans and hijabs. Hijabs specifically are antithetical to a uniquely French brand of feminism, the owls explain. We must understand that French Canadians, like the French, simply do not believe in multiculturalism; other cultures must adapt to and exist within the dominant one. Without understanding all this, we cannot comprehend what’s really happening.

Well, here’s what really happened Wednesday: after years of dithering, the Liberal government in Quebec City made it illegal to provide or receive government services with one’s face covered — which is to say no niqabs on university campuses, no niqabs at the police station, no niqabs on the bus or on the Métro. Not even the Parti Québécois’ much-loathed values charter proposed the latter. So what are we to make of this, owls? Was the Quiet Revolution, this proud rejection of church influence over the state, really about bestowing upon the state the power to tell religious people what they can and cannot wear on buses and trains? Shall we sing Gens du Pays?

How stupid do the Liberals think people are? How stupid do they think Canadian judges are? Stupid enough, apparently, to believe that this isn’t really about niqabs, but about a general outbreak of people riding public transit without their faces showing. Justice Minister Stéphanie Vallée said the rule applied equally to niqabs, balaclavas, dark sunglasses and anything else that might obscure all or part of the face. It’s a simple matter of “security, communication and identification.”

“You talk to me, I talk to you; I see your face, you see mine,” said Premier Philippe Couillard. “That’s part of communication. It’s a question, in my opinion, that’s not simply religious but human.”

Terrebonne, Que., 5:45 on a pitch-black, frigid, howling February morning. As shivering commuters line up for the bus, the driver fastidiously ensures each removes any hats, scarves, balaclavas or hoods. Sure. Very plausible.

The “bright side” of this vision, I keep hearing, is that it’s not as bad as the PQ’s. I don’t know about that. It affects far fewer people, certainly. Whereas the values charter targeted kippas, turbans and hijabs, the National Assembly only went after a tiny sub-minority of Quebec Muslims on Wednesday. But the PQ could never have gotten away with banning people in turbans or (especially) kippas from buses and trains; people wouldn’t have stood for it. More will stand for this, because there aren’t very many niqab-wearing women in Quebec, because they have no political power, and because they’re by far the biggest bugbears in this discussion. It’s all the more ugly, if anything, because it’s so cowardly.

Quebec values charter supporters in 2013. The new niqab ban is worse than the values charter in a way because it targets a specific sub-minority of Quebec Muslims, Chris Selley suggests.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes/File

The PQ’s proposals were inconsistent, certainly. But they at least nodded to consistency. Bernard Drainville’s failed Bill 60 (“affirming the values of state secularism and religious neutrality … and providing a framework for accommodation requests”) was branded nearly identically to the Liberals’ Bill 62 (“to foster adherence to state religious neutrality and … provide a framework for requests for accommodations on religious grounds”). Yet the Liberal bill forgets to target a single religious practice or garment other than the niqab. Then-Premier Pauline Marois said she didn’t want anyone to lose their jobs because of the charter; it didn’t make much sense, given its contents, but it was at least a gesture toward compassion. Vallée and Couillard quite emphatically want to bar certain women from public transit because they don’t like what they’re wearing, and they don’t even have the common decency to admit it.

The generous reading was that the Liberals just wanted to stop restrictions on religious practices from going any further, which all the opposition parties demand. They haven’t done that. Bigots will hate this law because it only targets a few women; principled secularists will hate it because it does nothing to “foster state religious neutrality.” (Indeed it does the precise opposite.) When it’s inevitably challenged and likely obliterated in court, some Quebecers might stand down: polls showed a majority who supported the values charter also wanted it to be constitutional. But a court rejection could also provide exactly what the PQ hoped it would: yet more proof to nationalist Quebecers that their society can never find its true expression as part of Canada.

Fifty years on from the Quiet Revolution, if this monstrosity is what passes for state neutrality in Quebec, maybe it can’t.